The picture was previewed at the Medallion Theatre in Dallas, Texas. Director Steven Spielberg was too nervous to sit and stood in the back of the theater. The equally jittery producers Richard Zanuck and David Brown holed up in a bar across the street. Spielberg was pleased the audience seemed attentive, tense, and noted positively there were no walkouts. Then, just after the little boy gets attacked on the raft, one man in front got up and Spielberg thought, "Oh my God, I went over the top with that blood." The man then began to run, alarming Spielberg even more. When he realized the guy had just run to the bathroom to throw up and then rush back to his seat, "I knew we had a hit." There was only one scream from the preview audience, but it was a good one. When the shark surfaces while Brody/Scheider is chumming, the whole audience let out a scream, throwing their popcorn and other things into the air. The preview cards revealed the screening to be a smash. "The MCA [Universal's parent company] stock went up several points the next day based on that preview," Brown said.

In spite of the preview's success, Spielberg wanted another big scream moment in the picture, so he re-shot the scene of Dreyfuss discovering a dead man in a boat that has been attacked (see Behind the Camera) for the preview in Lakewood, California. The new footage got just the effect he wanted-more so, in fact, as this scream far surpassed the other one. Most of the Universal studio brass was there and got so excited at the audience response they immediately started rethinking the release plan for the movie.

Universal decided to give Jaws a wide release, contrary to the usual practice at the time of "platforming" new pictures, i.e., opening them in key cities first, then putting them out across the country to secondary markets. The movie opened nationwide on the same day, with saturation booking in 409 U.S. theaters and 54 in Canada, creating a runaway box office total. As a result, Jaws "opened big," in industry parlance, bringing in about $14 million in its first week and $25.7 million in its first 13 days of release, according to Universal reports in summer 1975. That would have been enough of a phenomenon, but the picture proved to have major staying power, remaining big for months, disproving the notion that the public-particularly adult audiences-didn't go to movies in the summer. Thus, the summer blockbuster was created..

The movie's success is also attributable to what Universal claimed was the most extensive advertising campaign ever on primetime television for a feature film. The studio reportedly bought more than 25 half-minute spots on many major TV shows just prior to the picture's June 20, 1975 opening. Clark Ramsey, Universal's vice president for advertising and publicity, said a total of $1.8 million was spent on promotion before the opening.

Jaws was the first film to break the $100 million box office mark, the highest-grossing film to that date. Without taking inflation into account, it beat out previous record-holders The Godfather (1972), The Sound of Music (1965), and Gone with the Wind (1939).

In 2001, Jaws was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry as one of the films deemed culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.

Jaws lost the Academy Award for Best Picture to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) but did bring home Oscars for Verna Fields' editing, John Williams' score, and Best Sound.

Verna Fields was also awarded by the American Cinema Editors.

John Williams took home the film's only British Academy (BAFTA) Award. It was also nominated for Best Film, Director, Screenplay, Actor (Richard Dreyfuss), Editing, and Soundtrack.

Williams' score also won a Golden Globe. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which sponsors the awards, also nominated Jaws for Best Motion Picture-Drama, Peter Benchley and Carl Gottlieb for Best Screenplay, and Spielberg for direction.

Williams also won a Grammy for his score.

Steven Spielberg was nominated by the Directors Guild of America for Outstanding Directorial Achievement.

Benchley and Gottlieb were nominated for their adaptation of Benchley's novel by the Writers Guild of America.

As a measure of the film's significance as both a motion picture and as a marketing and distribution phenomenon, Jaws won awards for Outstanding Film of 1975 and for Best Advertising from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Films.

"We've really, I think, made a better movie than Jaws is a book." - Steven Spielberg, interviewed by David Halpern, Take One magazine, 1975

"Getting right to the point, Jaws is an artistic and commercial smash. ... There are three stars: Roy Scheider, very effective as the town's police chief torn between civic duty and the mercantile politics of resort tourism; Robert Shaw, absolutely magnificent as a coarse fisherman finally hired to locate the Great White Shark; and Richard Dreyfuss, in another excellent characterization as a likeable young scientist. The fast-moving 124-minute film engenders enormous suspense." - A.D. Murphy, Variety, June 17, 1975

"It's a noisy, busy movie that has less on its mind than any child on a beach might have. It has been cleverly directed by Steven Spielberg for maximum shock impact and short-term suspense, and the special effects are so good that even the mechanical sharks are as convincing as the people. ... Mr. Spielberg has so effectively spaced out the shocks that by the time we reach the spectacular final confrontation between the three men and the great white shark, we totally accept the make-believe on its own foolishly entertaining terms." - Vincent Canby, New York Times, June 1975

"What this movie is about, and where it succeeds best, is the primordial level of fear. The characters, for the most part, and the non-fish elements in the story, are comparatively weak and not believable." - Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune, June 20, 1975

"Steven Spielberg's Jaws>/B> is a sensationally effective action picture-a scary thriller that works all the better because it's populated with characters that have been developed into human beings we get to know and care about. It's a film that's as frightening as The Exorcist (1973) and yet it's a nicer kind of fright, somehow more fun because we're being scared by an outdoor-adventure saga instead of by a brimstone-and-vomit devil. ... All three performances are really fine. ... Probably the most inspired piece of casting in the movie is the use of Richard Dreyfuss as the oceanographer. ... Jaws is a great adventure movie of the kind we don't get very often any more. It's clean-cut adventure, without the gratuitous violence of so many action pictures. It has the necessary amount of blood and guts to work-but none extra. And it's one hell of a good story, brilliantly told." - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, June 1975

"Steven Spielberg's mechanical thriller is guaranteed to make you scream on schedule (John Williams's score even has the audience reactions programmed into the melodies), particularly if your tolerance for weak motivation and other minor inconsistencies is high." - Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader

"This is the most cynically manipulative movie [Spielberg's] ever made (although it's deepened by some telling points about the tensions of contemporary masculinity), and it must be seen for its unexpected editing, driving score, and careful build toward shock images so big they feel like they're jumping into your lap." - TV Guide

"It may be the most cheerfully perverse scare movie ever made. Even when you're convulsed with laughter you're still apprehensive, because the editing rhythms are very tricky, and the shock images loom up huge, right on top of you. The film belongs to the pulpiest sci-fi monster-movie tradition, yet it stands some of the old conventions on their head. ... Steven Spielberg sets up bare-chested heroism as a joke and scores off it all the way through the movie." - Pauline Kael, 5001 Nights at the Movies (Henry Holt, 1982)

"Love Jaws. How can you not love Jaws? I think Jaws is [Spielberg's] second-best movie, after Schindler's List [1993]. What I love about it is, it's a real primal movie." - writer-director John Milius, a couple of decades after the film's release

by Rob Nixon